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Es gibt ein Haus in Neu-Berlin...

"While I was gone, they set the world on fire. It wasn't a war anymore: it was a remaking. Some losses are inevitable. Some... unthinkable. Now they've built a new world. Armies of steel and thunder. They're rewriting history. But they forgot about me."
B.J. Blazkowicz, announcement trailer

Wolfenstein: The New Order is the fourth entrynote  in the Wolfenstein series, developed by MachineGames, a studio founded by several key members of Starbreeze Studios (developers of The Darkness, Escape from Butcher Bay, and Assault on Dark Athena) who left in 2009.

It is 1946, and the Allies are losing World War II thanks to a sudden technological leap made by the Nazi regime. B.J. Blazkowicz is sent on a secret mission to assassinate the man responsible for this: Wilhelm "Deathshead" Strasse. Unfortunately, the mission goes horribly wrong. B.J. barely escapes alive and suffers head trauma in the process, and spends the next fourteen years in an insane asylum. Come 1960, Blazkowicz awakens only to find that the worst has happened: the Nazis have won the war and now rule the world with their incredibly advanced technology. Blazkowicz joins a La Résistance group, the Kreisau Circle, in Berlin in an attempt to make things right... but how can he win a war that's already been lost?

A standalone prequel entitled Wolfenstein: The Old Blood was released on May 5, 2015. A sequel, titled Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, was released on October 27, 2017.

Check the character sheet. Not to be confused with the seminal British indie band or the Hearts of Iron IV mod with a similar concept


Wolfenstein: The New Order provides examples of:

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    A-F 
  • Action Prologue: The first mission starts with Blazkowicz and Fergus taking part in an aerial assault of Deathshead's base, followed by an on-foot assault that includes climbing a tower, using turrets to take down hordes of enemies and having to make a Sadistic Choice at the end of the mission.
  • Adapted Out: The agile, black leather wearing Elite Guard Nazi dominatrixes are absent from The New Order, despite appearing prominently in the previous two Wolfenstein games. Their absence is particularly noticeable since almost every other major memorable enemy from Return to Castle Wolfenstein, including the Black Guard and Uber Soldiers, make an appearance. It's likely they were deemed incompatible with the darker, more mature tone that Starbreeze/Machine Games wanted to take the series in.
  • AKA47: The firearms are simply referred to by generic names. Even the Thompson SMG, Luger and StG 44 used in the 1946 sections are referred to as generically as possible, though the StG that shows up in the game is heavily modified, such as an integrated folding foregrip and a wider profile due to "bullet acceleration tanks". In turn, the 1960 Assault Rifle is a more fictional design, though mating several elements of the Heckler & Koch G3 (most notably the rear sight drum) with the game's version of the StG (the front sight and charging handle). Arguably a case of Shown Their Work, as the G3 was descended from a prototype assault rifle developed by Mauser in 1944/45.
  • Alas, Poor Villain: Downplayed, but Bubi's death provides Frau Engel with her only vaguely sympathetic or humanizing moment in the entire series.
  • Alternate History: Not only has World War II lasted three years longer, but the Nazis have won. This is emphasized by famous historical and cultural images being Nazified, such as The V-J Day Kiss and The Beatles' iconic Abbey Road Crossing photo being performed by German soldiers.
  • Alternate-History Nazi Victory: As noted above, the game is set in an alternate timeline where the Nazis won.
  • Allohistorical Allusion: One of the newspaper articles you can find mentions that the name of the first Nazi astronaut on the moon was Hans Armstark. "Stark" of course, is German for "Strong"; therefore, their name is Hans Armstrong.
  • All There in the Manual: Various newspaper clippings can tell you about the Nazis' accomplishments in various theaters of the war, such as in Russia where (in a rather ironic parallel of the Bolshevik Revolution) the Russian people revolt against the Soviet government after many casualties and losses, or the London Resistance being annihilated by a new Nazi weapon, the London Monitor.
  • All Your Base Are Belong to Us: The entirety of Chapter 15.
  • Already Done for You: The Kreisau Circle prisoners in Deathshead's compound break themselves out rather than waiting around for B.J.. Good thing too, since when B.J. did show up, he was fighting the aftereffects of Bubi's paralytic.
  • Ambiguously Gay: Caroline's new design has something of a lesbian vibe: no-nonsense haircut, single earring, tattoos. She also has a rather prominent pinup girl poster in her room. However, no mention is made of her sexual or romantic history, so it remains up to the player's interpretation. The sequel eventually confirms that she was in a relationship with another woman, though they'd drifted apart by 1960.
  • America Saves the Day: Subverted; once the Nazis started dropping their own brand of nukes on the US, it didn't take long for them to surrender, thus guaranteeing the war was over in the Nazis' favour.
  • Anachronism Stew: The reveal trailer featured an extended "overture" for Jimi Hendrix's cover of "All Along The Watchtower", which, assuming it would even be written in this alternate history, was not even recorded in the real world until 1967; after the prologue, the game starts in 1960. Given that J could not and would not go the way of Nazification like the Beatles, and outright dies if he appears, it most certainly will never be performed.
  • And I Must Scream:
    • Blazkowicz spends fourteen years in a catatonic state, periodically aware of his surroundings but unable to do anything until the day the Nazis start killing patients then and there.
    • The same goes for either Fergus or Wyatt if Deathshead dissects either one in 1946 and puts their brain in his prototype robot in 1960.
  • …And That Little Girl Was Me: Ramona pops into existence out of the left field. It might feel jarring, until the contents of the diary and Anya's words show that she's actually Anya herself.
  • Anti-Frustration Features: If you reach a checkpoint with less than full health and die three times in a row, you'll start with 20 more health each subsequent time the checkpoint is reloaded after dying, up to your current maximum, and you may also be given extra ammo. This is so that you don't wind up getting stuck with just 20 health going into a tough fight.
  • Armor Is Useless: Takedowns are an instant-kill, regardless of how many layers a normal soldier is wearing. Justified, as B.J. stabs them in their armor's weak points, most commonly the neck. Although, it doesn't work on Supersoldaten.
  • Artificial Brilliance: The AI controlling enemies in combat is solid, with occasional moments of brilliance. They understand cover, flanking, use grenades, and shoot fairly accurately. Enemies also act according to their roles, with commanders hanging back while Ubersoldaten/Fire Troopers close the distance to turn B.J. into Schweizer Käse.
  • Artificial Stupidity: Outside of combat, enemies are strangely lacking in situational awareness. They'll often fail to notice bullets whizzing by their heads and embedding themselves in the wall beside them, friendlies dropping to the ground left and right, and B.J. crouching in a corner 20 feet away.
  • Artistic License – Biology:
    • Blazkowicz winds up spending 14 years in a semi-comatose state, aware of his surroundings but unable to move — realistically, a lot of his muscle mass would have atrophied over that period of time, and it would take at least months, if not years, for him to actually move on his own again. The most acknowledgement this gets is that he falls over immediately after killing his first Nazi and has trouble picking up his pistol before gameplay takes over and he's as nimble and articulate as he was in 1946.
    • Frau Engel really shouldn't be able to speak clearly after suffering such injuries to her jaw.
  • Artistic License – Engineering: The design of the Gibraltar bridge in game appears to be a beam or cable stay design, which is simply infeasible for a crossing in the area. The Strait of Gibraltar may only about 9 miles or 14 kilometers wide at its narrowest point, but it also varies from 300 to 900 meters (almost 1,000 to 3,000 feet) deep. Building just the pillars would be an even greater engineering challenge than the bridge itself.
  • Artistic License – Geography: London and Berlin aren't particularly close to each other. At least not close enough that BJ can drive from London to Berlin (through several implied checkpoints) in anything less than a few hours. Yet somehow BJ manages to reach the rebel HQ in Berlin while the Nazi attack (that started right about when he reached London) is still ongoing.
  • Artistic License – History: Several minor ones:
    • Several Nazi characters are seen smoking and there are even advertisements for Wolf brand cigarettes seen in several places. Historically, the NSDAP banned smoking in public buildings, party offices and public transportation and conducted various anti-smoking campaigns.
    • The game uses the phrase "Near Stettin, Poland" as though Germany actually ceded territory to a subjugated Poland. There is also a letter that refers to Frankfurt on the Oder as being on the German-Polish border before the war had even begun.
    • Most of German text appearing ingame is written with the Fraktur font. Historically, the German language ceased to use Fraktur in 1941.
    • Newspaper clippings in the game claim that the People's Liberation Army fought for the Republic of China. At the time, the PLA was the armed wing of the Communist Party of China, then an insurgency based in Northern China opposing the internationally-recognized ROC. Of course, this may be a case of Alternate History, as the war going south may have resulted in the ROC and Communists forming another United Front, or even being forced to completely merge, which would also explain why the Chinese managed to briefly gain ground against the Japanese before the Nazis got involved. This is supported by another newspaper clipping, in which an unnamed Chinese Chairman talks about a unified China.
  • Artistic License – Linguistics:
    • Set Roth is stated to have been a watchmaker in Stuttgart before the Nazis came to power, yet he speaks with a stereotypical Yiddish accent instead of the expected standard German one. Assuming he was born and raised in Germany, his native language would certainly have been German at this point in time.
    • Anya's grandparents are implausibly proficient in English considering they are living in a rural Poland that has been under the Nazi yoke for around twenty years.
      • For that matter, the same goes for most of the characters who are not native speakers of English: Klaus wouldn't have had much reason to learn the language in the past unless he did intelligence work, nor would Tekla (who is apparently Russian judging by her accent) be likely to learn it either, whether she lived under a Soviet or a Nazi regime. Then again, they do work with either Fergus or Wyatt, both of whom are native English speakers, so that may provide an explanation for their fluency. Anya herself is an exception, as she studied in London before the war.
  • Attack Drone: The WESPEnote  drones are flying weapons platforms controlled by a simple AI. They're rare and not all that dangerous, but their speed and erratic movement can make them annoying to deal with.
  • Attack Its Weak Point:
    • The Guard Robots are very similar to the Riot Guard mech suits from Escape from Butcher Bay (which was also made by the same dev team). They're virtually immune to small arms fire (although sufficient gunfire to their robot eye does eventually bring them down), but they have a weak point on their back which can be destroyed with a single bullet, causing them to shut down and explode.
    • The Baltisches Auge (Baltic Eye) and the London Monitor can only be harmed by shooting them in the eye.
  • Award-Bait Song: I Believe, sung by Melissa Hollick, played in the credits.
  • Badass Boast: Courtesy of Frau Engel:
    For your crime, you will die like vermin. I will hunt you down. At the end of the earth, I will find you. Your skin charred and your fats rendered. Your kind exterminated. In the end, I will feed your flesh to the furnace!
  • The Bad Guy Wins: Some of the worst bad guys ever, to boot, and this is at the beginning.
  • Bag of Spilling: Each level resets your inventory, leaving you just a knife and maybe one or two guns. Once you get the Laserkraftwerk, though, it stays with you as B.J.'s signature weapon. Upgrades to those individual guns also stay with you, even if you use chapter select to replay a level well before you get that upgrade.
  • Battle Amongst the Flames: The second part of the final battle with Deathshead has you fighting him in a basement filled with fire. The fire gets stronger the more you damage Deathshead.
  • Battle in the Rain: The final battle against the Prototype Robot that has the brain of either Fergus Reid or Private Wyatt as well as Deathshead.
  • Berserk Button:
    • Klaus' Nazi tattoo is enough for Blazkowicz to start punching him in the face before Wyatt/Fergus explains to him that Klaus is a defector.
    • Likewise, Blazkowicz does not take kindly to being called a Nazi, even (or especially) if it's to make a point.
    • Klaus gets mad whenever B.J. is inconsiderate of Max. Also goes the other way around, when the non-violent Max pounds a few Nazis into paste after Klaus is mortally wounded, even after he's been shot himself.
  • Big Bad: Wilhelm "Deathshead" Strasse, the inventor of the Nazi's advanced war winning weapons, serves as the main villain of the game.
  • Bilingual Bonus:
    • Those who know German can discern much from the posters. However, more detailed articles that you can find are subject to Translation Convention, even if they're written in languages that B.J. is unlikely to be familiar with, such as Chinese.
      • One of the London highway signs reads Machinenspiele - Machine Games.
    • Set Roth, being voiced by an Israeli actor, speaks genuine Yiddish and Hebrew. For example, the code rhyme he uses to open the Da'at Yichud vault can be translated as "4-6-3-8, I face the gate". He refers to B.J. as "Shimshon" - which is the Hebrew pronunciation of Samson, a Biblical figure known for his great strength, defender of the Israelis and destroyer of all those who threatened them. Samson died collapsing a fortress full of his enemies while he was still inside.
    • Averted in that when we see Da'at yichud written out on screen, in "Hebrew" it is clearly meant to be readable to an English-speaking audience and not proper Hebrew letters, as the correct spelling is דעת ייחוד.
      • It's written left to right, while Hebrew is read right to left. Read right to left (with upside down and backwards letters flipped, and fake one removed), the text on screen says קתבוע דאאם, which would sound something like "k'tuvah daam" which is meaningless.
      • From left to right, the letters in the game are: final mem, alef, an apostrophe (which can be placed at the end of a word to change the pronunciation or signify yiddush origin, but is not found in the middle of hebrew words), alef, dalet, ayin, vav, a backwards bet, a made up letter, an upside down tav, and an upside down and backwards Qof/koof.
    • The "…And That Little Girl Was Me" trope is spoiled/essentially confirmed if you know Polish yourself; the cover says "belongs to" and the two letters shown are AN.
    • If you kill a guard in stealth and another guard sees him, he'll utter "Scheisse..."; the subtitles will translate it as "Curious...". That is not what that word means.note 
  • The Big Guy: Blazkowicz looks like a heavyweight MMA fighter. Max makes Blazkowicz look small in comparison.
  • Bittersweet Ending: While Blazkowicz does kill Strasse he is severely wounded and can't walk to get himself out of the fortress. He orders his allies to nuke the building anyway.
  • BFG: The Laserkraftwerk. Big, bad, and, when fully upgraded, able to reduce Giant Mooks to gibs in one shot.
  • Black-and-Grey Morality: B.J. and the Kreisau Circle are absolutely ruthless, showing no mercy to any of the soldiers they kill and consistently resort to more and more desperate tactics to simply ensure that their loved ones will survive. The first mission for the Circle starts out with an allied character suicide-bombing a military installation, and at about mid-way into the game, they perform what is essentially a terrorist attack that very clearly kills innocent civilians. Of course, they are only doing this because of the evil the Nazis are capable of...
  • Black Dude Dies First:
    • In the opening level, the first character you explicitly see get shot is an unnamed African American soldier swimming towards you.
    • Bombate averts this trope by not only surviving the whole game, but also surviving being shot multiple times by Frau Engel during the escape from Camp Belica.
    • Played straight with J in Wyatt's timeline. He's the first major character in the resistance to get bumped off when Frau Engel and her soldiers find the Kreisau Circle's headquarters.
  • Bling-Bling-BANG!: Frau Engel has a gold-plated Luger which she uses to intimidate you during the card game scene. You can steal it from her safe in the concentration camp, though it's just a collectible and can't actually be used.
  • Bloodier and Gorier: A lot more liberal with blood and body parts than its predecessors.
  • Body Horror: There are quite a few instances of this, ranging from the horrible facial scars that Deathshead and Frau Engel have, to the merge of flesh and machinery that is the Uber-Soldats and Kampfhunds. The former are actually the least horrifying instances.
  • Bolivian Army Ending: The game ends with Blazkowicz wounded by Deathshead's grenade and ordering the Resistance to drop the bomb on Deathshead's compound, with him still on top of it.
  • Boring, but Practical: Despite the access to laser weapons, most of the time, you will stick to the Pistols and Assault Rifles for most situations; the Pistol is the easiest-to-use silent option (simply cap people in the head) and the Assault Rifle, as it tends to be, is the most versatile - there's very little that doesn't go down to a couple bursts of 7.92mm, and you eventually get nifty underbarrel rocket launcher to deal with that.
  • Book Ends: The game begins and ends in Deathshead's fortress.
  • Bond Villain Stupidity: A special mentions goes to Deathshead, who plays this trope surprisingly straight after deciding to kill Blazkowicz by leaving him in a furnace guarded by an Ubersoldat. Granted, he probably didn't expect B.J. and his allies to over-power the Ubersoldat with a single pipe.
  • Boss Tease: Wolfenstein: The New Order has two examples: the first is either Wyatt or Fergus, whom you fight at the end depending on which one you chose to sacrifice in 1946. The other is, of course, Deathshead, whom B.J. meets in 1946 and is responsible for extracting either Wyatt or Fergus's brain, and by 1960 he becomes a General and the last enemy you face.
  • Brain Theft: Whoever Deathshead dissects in 1946 gets their brain ripped out, put in a jar, and used in 1960 as the Wetware CPU for Deathshead's Machine Man. And they're completely aware of everything the whole time, but can't stop it.
  • But for Me, It Was Tuesday: All the primary villains avert this. Deathshead recognizes Blazkowicz, both in 1946 and 1960, and remembers Fergus/Wyatt, being able to find the specimen jar with their brain in just a few seconds on a shelf filled with dozens of samples. At Camp Belica Bubi at first finds Blazkowicz familiar, but it takes Frau Engel to recognize him as the man they encountered on the train to Berlin.
  • But Thou Must!:
    • In the last part of the game, climbing up a ladder will force the player into a cutscene where they'll see glimpses of Bubi waiting for them in the vent shaft, but B.J. will keep on climbing. Even chucking a grenade into the vent changes nothing whatsoever.
    • When Fergus/Wyatt lowers you back onto the bridge a second time, staying on the Whisper helicopter for too long will cause a massive Panzerhund to come out of nowhere. If you dismount when you're told to, the Panzerhund doesn't appear. However it is possible to kill the Panzerhund before it can land, slightly averting this trope.
  • Call-Back:
    • The secret nightmare level is a port of the first level of Wolfenstein 3-D, complete with 16-bit textures and enemy sprites.
    • B.J. is modeled after his appearance in the original Wolfenstein 3D.
    • The phrase GET PSYCHED flashes for a split second before the very first cutscene.
  • Canned Orders over Loudspeaker: What else do you expect out of Those Wacky Nazis? Nazi propaganda is broadcast 24/7 in Berlin, as well as in Camp Belica, courtesy of Frau Engel.
  • Can't Take Anything with You: Downplayed. B.J. drops any heavy weapon he's carrying when told to interact with something, which includes climbing ladders. The devs exploit this to keep you from fielding heavy weapons where they don't want you to, such as in boss battles, as these BFGs would take away much of the challenge.
  • Captain Smooth and Sergeant Rough: Played straight with B.J. and Fergus. Inverted with B.J. and Wyatt.
  • Character Development: In the first few games, B.J. was a voiceless, expressionless cipher. In Wolfenstein (2009), he's a cocky badass. By the beginning of New Order, B.J. becomes a fatalist wreck with the "thousand yard stare", serious PTSD, and an obsession with killing Deathshead (and Nazis). That's before his squad is wiped out, a comrade dissected, and Nazis take over the world, after which things only get worse for him.
  • Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys: Averted, and quite awesomely at that. It is implied that France is one of the few countries that still has a resistance movement in 1960, and they are no closer to giving up than they were at the beginning of the Nazi occupation nearly twenty years ago.
  • Chekhov's Gun: The shrapnel embedded in B.J's skull, or more specifically the damage to his brain caused by said shrapnel, is implied to be the reason B.J. is able to shake off the massive sedative Bubi shoots him up with.
  • Clarke's Third Law: Set explains that Da'at Yichud's real technology, not just the Nazi's reverse-engineered imitations, will seem like magic.
  • Cliffhanger: The game ends with B.J. gravely wounded and giving the signal to his friends to go ahead and nuke Deathshead's fortress, with B.J. still inside...
  • Cluster F-Bomb: Violent Glaswegian Fergus drops plenty of these in his dialogue.
  • Concealment Equals Cover: Largely averted in both gameplay and cutscenes. Concrete barriers and pillars (the most common cover) can be gradually destroyed by gunfire, and destroyed outright with explosives. On the cutscene side, Tekla is killed during the raid on Kreisau Circle HQ when a soldier shoots her through a wall.
  • Continuity Nod:
    • The prologue has you infiltrating Deathshead's latest lab with disastrous results. Turns out he's increased security since the destruction of both the X-Lab and his zeppelin.
    • When you rescue Caroline Becker, she states that one of the last things she remembers was "punching Hans Grosse in the face".
    • The Black Guard Elite Mooks from Return to Castle Wolfenstein reappear in The New Order. Just like in RtCW, they can survive twice as much damage as regular soldiers and have better aim and tactical skill. Oddly, unlike the other enemy types they don't get their own entry in the game's database.
    • Deathshead pilots a giant suit of armor with four chainguns, very reminiscent of the one Hitler had in Wolfenstein 3-D. He even uses Hitler's line, "Die, Allied schweinhund!". This boss is listed as Mecha Deathshead, just like the fan nickname Mecha Hitler for the Wolfenstein 3D boss. It's also pitch-black and piloted by a high-ranking Nazi official, just like the Death Knight in Spear of Destiny.
    • While swimming in the sewer systems underneath Berlin, B.J. recalls swimming in the cesspools under Deathshead's X-Labs.
    • After stealing the stealth helicopters, B.J. asks Caroline how she survived her apparent death in Wolfenstein (2009). She has no idea - all she remembers is Hans Grosse shooting her, an explosion, and apparently being lifted up and out of the Veil.
    • A small touch, but some of the in-game posters are defaced with the same symbol used in Wolfenstein (2009) to mark the Kreisau Circle safehouses.
  • Contrived Coincidence:
    • The good guys smuggle B.J. onboard a U-Boat so he can hijack it and bring them to an underwater Da'at Yichud safekeep. He just happens to end up on the Eva's Hammer, the biggest and baddest U-Boat there is, complete with a nuclear cannon.
    • BJ takes shrapnel to the head, falls in the sea, and is lucky enough to be rescued, not recognized and brought to an asylum, never selected for experimentation, and for the nurse who cares for him to be a serial killer who targets nazis.
  • Cool Boat: The Eva's Hammer, flagship of the Nazi U-boat fleet, is a massive submarine that not only looks cool but carries a nuclear artillery piece as its main gun. A whole chapter is devoted to B.J. sneaking aboard, slaughtering everyone inside and stealing it for the resistance's planned attack on Deathshead's fortress.
  • Cranial Plate Ability: As a form of Foreshadowing. During the battle at Deathshead's Compound in 1946, after B.J. picks up either Wyatt or Fergus, they escape the Compound just as it's about to be destroyed via grenade. A shrapnel gets into B.J.'s brain, and leaves him catatonic for 14 years. Fast forward to 1960, during the climax, he's faced with Bubi, Frau Engel's lover, who drugs B.J., only to find out that the shrapnel prevented the drug from getting into B.J.'s brain. B.J. recovers and knifes Bubi to death while Frau Engel is Forced to Watch from a distance.
  • Crapsack World: This is to be expected since 75% of the world has been conquered by the Nazis. Let's take a look, shall we?
    • Africa is slowly, but surely, being conquered by the Nazis. The warfare, terraforming projects, and indiscriminate big game hunting has also caused the extinction of huge swaths of African wildlife and turned Africa's landscape unrecognizable.
    • From what we've heard of the United States, they're not doing so good. The least of which is that New York City is an atomic wasteland and the worst of which are the hints (from J's facial scars and dialogue) that the United States has set up death camps of their own. There is an active Resistance, but the Nazis firmly have the US in their grip.
    • The other Axis Powers, Italy and Japan, were conquered after the Nazis betrayed them near the end of the war. Italy was merged with Germania, and Japan is now a puppet state controlled by the Nazis.
    • Soviet Russia fell and was abandoned by Stalin after he fled and disappeared without a trace. German newspapers/propaganda theorize that he was killed by his subordinates.
    • The majority of London (Big Ben being one of the few exceptions) has been demolished and replaced with monuments to the Nazi's victory, surrounded by "quarantine blocks": Disease-ridden ghettos that house (imprison) the lower class without power or running water. To top it off, the furious, brutal resistance movement has been destroyed completely by a giant mech, the London Monitor.
    • A letter from a missionary to the Berlin Church of the Third Reich shows that Nazi soldiers routinely slaughter the indigenous people of South America.
    • In 1948, China started gaining the upper hand against Japan, but then the Nazis invaded and defeated them, annexing all of Japan's territory in the process and building a city in what used to be Manchuria.
    • Newspaper clippings apparently made by the French resistance imply they're still fighting, despite twenty years of Nazi-occupied hell.
    • One of the trailers shows a German referee executing a Brazilian football player - because he made a play that ended in one of the German players having a scraped knee.
    • Even Berlin, the heart of Germany, isn't a nice place to live. During the quest to retrieve the welder for Set Roth, you can overhear a woman reporting her neighbor's son's odd behavior. His heinous crime... trying on his mother's lipstick.
  • Curb-Stomp Battle: The prologue in a nutshell, as the increasingly desperate Allies struggle to take on a technologically advanced Nazi war machine. By 1960, the Third Reich has direct and indirect control over much of the world.
  • Darker and Edgier: Quite possibly the darkest entry of the whole series, what with the Nazis conquering the entire world, and the scant remains of La Résistance fighting a losing battle against the fascists. The mood is set early on, with B.J. commenting on how many young men he's seen killed in the war, and a scene where Deathshead cuts out the eyes of one of your comrades. Furthermore, this is probably the first game in the franchise, and indeed, one of the few World War II related games in recent memory, to pull absolutely no punches in depicting just how socially reactionary, racist, and genocidal the Nazi ideology was.
  • Death of a Child: Recurringly happens in a world where the Nazis still dominate.
  • Defector from Decadence: Klaus was proud to be a Nazi until their standards for being considered human destroyed his family.
  • Determinator: A newspaper clipping suggests that the French Resistance is still fighting on after twenty years of Nazi occupation, and they are no closer to giving up than they were after the fall of France.
  • Diesel Punk: Big time, since this Alternate History is based off of what the future would've looked like from the 1940s, and a world run by Nazis definitely gives the Darker and Edgier vibe that sets the genre apart from Steampunk. Though it also has somewhat less notable elements of Raygun Gothic.
  • Disability Immunity: The shrapnel embedded in Blazkowicz's head ends up saving his life near the end of the game when Bubi injects him with a tranquilizer. The reason he wasn't paralyzed was because the connections in his nervous stem were screwed up and the poison wasn't able to block the signals in his brain, hence why Bubi blurts out, "There must be something very wrong with your cerebral cortex!"
  • Disproportionate Retribution: In one of the trailers depicting a Nazi-dominated version of the 1950 FIFA World Cup, a Brazilian player makes a clumsy tackle that results in a German player scraping his knee. The referee strolls up to the offending player (who is protesting his innocence), produces a Luger and executes the poor sod right there on the pitch.
  • Does This Remind You of Anything?: The newspaper article about the nuking of New York and the surrender of the U.S. are almost certainly inspired by the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the surrender of Japan. The part where Hitler defends the nuking because an invasion would've killed more people is a kind of a giveaway.
  • Dolled-Up Installment: To an extent. As noted in the Rooster Teeth video in the trivia section, the game was originally supposed to be a separate game all on its own. But when MachineGames couldn't get it off the ground, they settled on taking the Wolfenstein brand instead, taking most of the ideas from the original project and transplanting more or less of those into the game we see today.
  • Downer Beginning: The entirety of the prologue. The Allies' last desperate throw of the dice to kill the head of the Nazi science division and prevent total Nazi victory completely fails, and B.J is gravely wounded and rendered incapacitated and comatose. The Nazis drop an atom bomb on American soil not long after, forcing a final surrender.
  • The Dragon: While they are never shown together, a set of photos in the Kreisau Circle's base implies that Frau Engel is this to Deathshead. B.J. even refers to her as "Death's Apostle" when viewing her portrait in the concentration camp.
  • Dragon-in-Chief: While a Führer is mentioned several times (who is implied to still be Hitler as German soldiers still say, "Heil Hitler"), all indications point to Deathshead being the one who's truly in charge of everything.
    • The German-language newspaper clippings never use the term "Führer", but rather "Staatsoberhaupt" (Head of State). Also, this individual is never referred to by name. In the moon base one of the collectibles is a golden impression resembling Hitler that might be his death mask.
    • In The Old Blood, it's hinted that the modern Hitler is secretly some form of very well preserved reanimated undead.
    • Hitler himself makes an appearance in the sequel... as a frail and senile old wreck who clearly isn't fit to run the Reich. No wonder Deathshead took the helm.
  • Dramatic Thunder: The final battle against Deathshead is this. Deathshead even says that he gets his shield from the storm.
    Deathshead: You attempt to weaken me. But my shield draws its power from the storm itself. I channel from Asgard!
  • Dying Moment of Awesome:
    • In Fergus' timeline, Tekla manages to kill thirteen Nazi soldiers with nothing but pistols before they get her — and that's not counting the seven she got before this, which actually upsets her because it throws off her "model". It would have been a regular Moment of Awesome if she'd escaped with B.J., but she insists this is supposed to be her last day.
    • In Wyatt's timeline, J, fed up with all of the running and silence he's had to deal with his life, cranks his music to its loudest and blares "The Star Spangled Banner" for all of Berlin to hear, enough to make the (solid concrete) ceiling shake.
    • In both timelines, the resistance portion of the game starts off with Bobby driving a Car Bomb directly into one of the most fortified buildings in London to give B.J. an opening to enter, and near the end Klaus rams his car off the bridge to squish a pair of Nazi soldiers before being shot to death in the passenger seat, triggering Max Haas' Berserk Button.
    • A minor one, but in the asylum, one dead nurse in the background lies in a pool of her blood with a shotgun at her side. A few feet from her lies the Nazi kommando with his head blown off.
    • From the villains' side, Deathshead himself. After being defeated, he takes out a cocked grenade, with Blazkowicz at point blank range and blows them both up. It's only that B.J. is Made of Iron that he survived the initial blast.
  • Easy-Mode Mockery: Just like in the original, the "Can I play, Daddy?" difficulty is represented by an image of very worried B.J. in a baby bonnet and sucking a pacifier. Its description is "Very easy difficulty setting for the spineless gamer."
    • To a lesser extent, the "Don't hurt me" difficulty is represented with B.J. having a This Is Gonna Suck look on his face.
  • Elite Mooks: The black-armored Deathshead Commandos are tracked separately from regular Nazi soldiers in the game's statistics page, but actually aren't any tougher than the regular Mooks. In contrast, the heavily-armored Riot Guards and Black Guards encountered later in the game can survive twice as much damage as regular soldiers, and have better aim and tactical skill.
  • Embedded Precursor: Taking a nap on a specific bed in the base causes BJ to have a nightmare. Said nightmare is E1M1 of Wolfenstein 3-D.
  • The End... Or Is It?: During the end credits, the music fades out as the sound of an approaching helicopter starts fading in. Many took this as a Sequel Hook, which was confirmed with the reveal of The New Colossus in 2017.
  • Enemy Chatter: Lots of it and mostly in German. But it is subtitled in English for the convenience of non-German speakers.
  • Enemy Summoner: Nazi officers are a non-magical example. They're mostly harmless in combat but keep summoning whole squads of Nazi soldiers into battle until they're taken out, which is a whole lot more dangerous. The game helpfully warns you when officers are nearby so you have a chance to neutralize them stealthily.
  • Energy Weapon: All weapons on the Moon but one are laser-based, including the local version of the DMR. The sole exception is the pistol, probably because you need its Hollywood Silencer to get past the many officers and a laser pistol would be anything but stealthy. The DMR retains its laser capability as an alternate fire mode upon your return to Earth.
  • Eye Scream: In the prologue mission, Deathshead makes you choose which of your two friends' eyes he'll gouge out with a scalpel, and will kill you all if you don't choose. You get to meet the one who lives later in the game.
  • Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Ramona's diary mentions a Nazi who cried for his mother as he was slowly bleeding out from a fatal stabbing.
  • Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
    • Frau Engel and Bubi. This is really highlighted at the end, when you kill Bubi in front of Frau Engel, who is watching over a video phone, screams and storms out of view.
      Bubi: This woman is my life, you understand? My everything. Warm blood. The smell. It sickens me. But I would do anything to see her smile.
    • Deathshead will taunt you during the final battle as you blow up zeppelins providing him with a force field by remarking that they were full of men who had wives and children. His tone is, however, more mocking than condemning.
    • One of the Nazis in chapter 4's prison complex complains about his kid getting a respiratory illness from the mold that's starting to show up in the concrete, and accuses the government of covering up how harmful the concrete actually is.
    • When you assault the bridge, you can see a Nazi drag a comrade up from over a ledge, and another desperately trying to perform CPR on a squadmate.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: In the intro, the soldiers protest their commander from killing the staff, saying they're not supposed to purge them. By then, it's too late to stop them.
    • As seen above, one of the guards at the prison is thoroughly convinced that their healthy leadership is covering up how harmful the concrete used in most buildings is to the populace, pointing out when the other guard starts coughing after having admonished him for such paranoid talk.
    • When B.J. arrives at the concentration camp, Bubi inadvertently saves him by protesting against Engel's decision to purge him - it'd be a senseless waste of a muscled inmate.
  • Everything Breaks: A justified example. Most of the Nazi buildings are made of "Über Concrete", which Set Roth explains was stolen from the Da'at Yichud; however, they gave the Nazis a deliberately flawed formula that would lose structural integrity over time and become brittlenote .
  • Evil Old Folks: Both Frau Engel and Deathshead are well past their best years. The latter was already pretty old when introduced in Return to Castle Wolfenstein, a game taking place in 1943. The game site lists his age (presumably ca. 1960) as 100.
  • Excuse Plot: Averted, unlike previous games in the franchise. The fact that trope was averted was something that caught critics off guard and its storytelling chops wound up being one of the most praised aspects of the game.
  • Facial Horror: There's a reason the Ubersoldat wear masks, and it ain't pretty.
    • Frau Engel becomes a victim of this after Herr Faust, Camp Belica's robot guard, is reprogrammed to see her as an enemy, severely maiming the entire lower half of her face in the ensuing struggle. While surgeons do manage to put her face back together, she's still severely scarred.
  • Faction Calculus: The two differing timelines use the same formula as a normal example. Going with the Fergus timeline enables health cap upgrades and hotwiring locks tend to lead to frontline combat. Going with the Wyatt timeline makes armor pickups more potent and lockpicking doors that lead to stealthy approaches and ambush tactics.
  • Fascist, but Inefficient: Given that they have developed AI sophisticated enough to run various combat mechs, it seems ridiculous that they have political prisoners eager to conduct sabotage operate those cement mixers at the concentration camp. The work may be intended as punishment, but it still seems like it would be better to automate all industrial production you possibly can, freeing up civilian manpower for the armed forces and leaving political prisoners for medical experiments and suchlike.
  • Fetch Quest: The interlude missions that occur at the Kreisau Circle HQ are these. Get this folder from the archives, get a sample of some uber-concrete, find a welder etc. These are used to drop little tidbits about life under Nazi rule.
  • Final Dungeon Preview: The first chapter ends at Deathshead's compound, the same place that the final battle against both Wyatt/Fergus and Deathshead himself takes place on.
  • Fish out of Temporal Water: B.J. has a mild case due to spending fourteen years in catatonia.
  • Forced to Watch:
    • B.J. has to watch Deathshead execute whoever he chooses to die but for the player it's a Gory Discretion Shot.
    • Inverted in the climax: Frau Engel has to watch her lover Bubi being knifed to death by B.J. just after Bubi discovers that the drug doesn't have any effect on B.J.
  • Foreshadowing: Newspaper clippings in the Kreisau HQ mention a new type of limestone discovered in Croatia that's perfect for making super concrete. B.J. eventually heads to a concentration camp there to free Set Roth, who's sabotaging the concrete by adding limestone.
    • Newspaper clippings in Anya's house, as well as a wicked-looking chainsaw (in an area with no trees) and in the Kreisau Circle HQ talk about a serial killer who targeted Nazis. Anya turns out to actually be the hardcore Nazi-slayer serial killer in her "cousin's" diaries she supposedly found.
    • In the climax, BJ rushes out of an elevator and opens fire on Deathshead. Who is literally sitting behind laser-proof glass, proclaims that he knows BJ, and says this will be the last time they meet. Then Deathshead baits BJ into killing his old foe with his bare hands, and whips out a grenade...
    • In the prologue, Deathshead makes a comment suggesting that English is a dying tongue. While it seems like a snide remark about how badly the war is going for the free world, it foreshadows a plot point in Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus where the Nazis make speaking English illegal in the occupied American territories.
    • A newspaper clipping suggests that the French Resistance is still fighting the Nazis twenty years after the country first fell in 1940, and they are no closer to giving up than they were then. Come Wolfenstein: Youngblood, you go to France and meet the Resistance.
  • Fossil Revival: A newspaper reveals a Nazi scientist's idea to recreate extinct species for a prehistoric zoo, and if used properly, the military.

    G-R 
  • Gameplay and Story Integration:
    • Some of the concrete barriers scattered throughout the game get destroyed more easily than you'd expect, particularly since it's a super-concrete the Nazis developed. This could just be in the name of destructibility, but not only is it justified (mold is growing inside the concrete, weakening it), the justification becomes a plot point. After analyzing a moldy sample of concrete and comparing it to the Da'at Yichud's original plans, Anya determines that someone in the know is sabotaging the concrete, providing a potential ally. Since only the Da'at Yichud would know how to make the concrete, that someone must be a member, and would be a great help against the Nazis, since all of their super-science is reversed-engineered from the Da'at Yichud's even-more-super-science.
    • The game shows a remarkable degree of this. In Wyatt's timeline, when escaping from Eisenwald Prison in game, Wyatt knocks over a Nazi loudspeaker with a brick. He takes the loudspeaker with him, which can be seen in his hands throughout the rest of this level's cutscenes and gameplay. When you reach the Kreisau base, you learn Wyatt was keeping the loudspeaker with him to give to J. It's quite impressive continuity.
    • B.J. takes serious abuse in several cutscenes, including multiple stab wounds at one point, yet usually recovers quickly and shrugs off these injuries. Normally, this would count as Gameplay and Story Segregation, but counts as this instead given the gameplay mechanics. After all, B.J. takes bullets, explosions, and stabs while in gameplay without much concern, and his durability in cutscenes is consistent with this.
      • In addition to that, whenever the BJ takes damage during a "playable cutscene" such as when he's captured and stabbed repeatedly, his health drops a corresponding amount.
      • The story also makes measures to acknowledge BJ's injuries; a guard comments on the amount of shrapnel in his body during an X-ray scan. The sequel takes it even further; BJ is at first wheel-chair bound from his injuries, and later uses a powered exoskeleton so he can walk and fight again
  • Gatling Good: B.J. can use mounted chainguns as portable weaponry, though this slows him down and prevents him from switching to other weapons, until he drops it or puts it back.
  • Gasmask Mooks: As seen here, here and here. These Mooks also have a crude version of Power Armor, with the "gas masks" being glorified faceplates.
  • General Ripper: Deathshead not only has the rank of General in the Wehrmacht, but a zealous devotion to enforcing their ideology, as well. See the Politically Incorrect Villain entry for a hint of his fanaticism.
  • Genre Throwback: For old school FPSs, with things ranging from big levels to health packs to multiple weapon pick-ups, though there is a bit of new school thrown in, like semi-regenerating health and a "cinematic" focus on the story. You can collect heart containers and complete side-objectives to earn perks, but these won't do much good without scrounging up weapons and tactical thinking against the giant robots.
  • Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: B.J. does this to Wyatt in the prologue to snap him out of a state of panic. Wyatt thanks him afterwards.
  • Ghostapo: Averted. Unlike Return to Castle Wolfenstein, there are no magical creatures or weaponry; evidently, the Nazis decided that their occult research was a waste of funds and channelled everything to Deathshead and his Super Science experiments instead. It worked.
  • Giant Mook/Heavily Armored Mook: Heavy soldiers and Ubersoldats. Heavy soldiers are your standard FPS heavy armor/juggernaut type enemy, while the Ubersoldats are outright mini-bosses. The 1960 versions of the Ubersoldats have titanium armor that renders small arms fire almost useless against them (although energy weapons and explosives still work fairly well).
  • Glasgow Grin: Part of Deathshead's scarring from the zeppelin crash in the previous game.
  • Go Fetch: In the first mission, Probst Wyatt III saves B.J's life by tossing a grenade at a Panzerhund... which it then catches in its teeth.
  • Gorn: A staple of the series. Using the Automatic Shotgun almost always send limbs flying, and the Laserkraftwerk always explodes regular mooks into fleshy gobbets of meat.
  • Gory Discretion Shot: Whatever B.J. did to the Nazi, Keller, in Anya's basement involved a chainsaw and was too gory even for this game. Whatever was left of him, it was definitely headless, according to a news report.
    • After choosing the fate of either Fergus or Private Wyatt, it's not shown what happens. Averted at the end, where B.J. has a flashback to the character's fate.
  • Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Wyatt tends to do this, fitting with his All-American Boy personality.
  • Gratuitous German: Averted big time. Even German dialects, such as Bavarian, are portrayed with great accuracy and the result is far less flinch-worthy than many other games.
    • Played straight in one instance where how the Uber Concrete, as spoken by Caroline Becker, is written properly in German as "Super Beton" which directly translate into "Great Concrete".
  • Gross-Up Close-Up: Frau Engel stands up and gets face-to-face with B.J., giving the player a view of her lovely, ruined mug after Herr Faust destroys half her jaw. She can talk normally anyway.
  • Guide Dang It!:
    • Anyone looking to complete their collectibles collection is likely to consult a guide sooner or later. Most are reasonably easy to find with some searching off the beaten path, but a few are fiendishly well-hidden, especially in levels without officers to kill to mark their locations.
    • The Final Boss is known to frustrate some players to no end, mostly because Mecha-Deathshead is surrounded by a Deflector Shield, and most FPS veterans have been conditioned over the years to not waste ammo on shielded bosses until their shield has been deactivated. However, shooting this particular shielded bosses does have an effect by stunning him for quite some time after only a few hits, but numerous players didn't realize this because they never even attempted it due to previous experiences.
  • Guns Akimbo: Exaggerated. There are a couple of laser weapons which double as cutting tools; you only come across one of them each in the campaign. You can dual wield everything else, including massive shotguns, assault rifles, and scoped DMR rifles. However, you can't mix-and-match. Also, it takes twice as long to reload dual-wielded weapons, as B.J. reloads them one at a time. You can cancel the second gun's reload by opening fire, but you'll do so with only the one.
  • Gutted Like a Fish: Blazkowitz tries to do this to Strauss, but he sets of a handgrenade first. fortunately, Blazkowitz survives, albiet missing his legs.
  • Handicapped Badass: Back in the 2009 installment, Caroline Becker got her pelvis shattered along with six vertebrae, paralyzing her below the waist. She's wheelchair-bound by 1960. This hasn't stopped her from kicking ass. She pilots helicopters, hang glides into a heavily guarded Nazi airbase, and towards the end, she gets whats essentially a Da'at Yichud Iron Man suit and starts throwing down.
  • Harder Than Hard: Uber difficulty. Enemies deal 2.5 times as much damage, and have better situational awareness in stealth segments. For additional challenge, there are the unlockable game modes which are Uber with additional handicaps, such as having no HUD or an iron man mode where you have to restart the entire game if you die at any point.
  • Hard Mode Perks: Inverted with the unlockable 999 Mode, which spawns you in each level with 999 health and infinite ammo for your guns, grenades and knives, but forces you to play on Uber difficulty. Also, because your 999 health is considered an overcharge, it slowly depletes over time back to 100.
  • He's Back!: After spending fourteen years in a loony bin, all it took to bring B.J. back was the kind care of Anya and a Nazi pointing a gun in his face.
  • Heel–Face Turn: Klaus Kreutz was once a proud Nazi, tattoos and all. But when his child was born with a club foot, both his wife and the child were murdered by the secret police. After that, he joined the Resistance and became a father figure to Max Hass.
  • Hell Is That Noise: Deathshead's Leitmotif is an erratic and terrifying high-pitched string note. Have a listen.
    • Every stealth kill's also accompanied by strange, eerie noises that almost resemble a drawn-out Scare Chord.
    • The Mecha-Mooks talk in extremely distorted, deep, and near incomprehensible German.
  • Hidden Purpose Test: Played with in the "Night Train" sequence. While Frau Engel does specifically warn B.J. not to grab for her pistol while taking the picture test, the only point of the test was to see if he would try anyway. Although the fact said pistol is still fully loaded and ready to fire indicates Engel wasn't really taking the test that seriously, as shown by her startled expression before you shoot her in the face.
  • Historical Domain Character: J, one of the main characters in Wyatt's timeline, is heavily implied to be Jimi Hendrix. Note, however, that the historical one was born in 1942 and the one in the game seems significantly older than 18.
  • Historical In-Joke:
    • The Russians lost to the Nazis when the Russian people revolted against the Soviet government after a large number of casualties and military defeats in a rather ironic parallel of the Bolshevik Revolution back in World War I, complete with the "disappearance" of the leader.
    • The United States was defeated when the Nazis dropped a nuclear weapon on one of their largest cities and forced a surrender from the government, with Hitler stating it was necessary to avoid a protracted land invasion that would supposedly save millions of civilians and soldiers alike from the horrors of war. Sound familiar?
    • Britain is defeated after a protracted air war, a nod to the Battle of Britain. Except this time, it didn't go so well for the Brits.
    • Mass, invasive surveillance, police informants, and encouragement to spy on your neighbors is rampant in Berlin. The same thing happened in East Germany until the fall of the wall.
    • The display in the London Nautica informs us that apes were launched into space in rockets beginning in 1947. This actually happened in our timeline, though in the United States rather than Germany.
    • The Nazis eventually not only helped Japan win against China (The Nazi Party and Nationalist China used to be allied, before the Nazis shifted towards the Japanese), they turned on their allies (which was, by all accounts, likely if the Axis ever won) and conquered it - one of the letters intercepted talks about how the Nazis are building a city on top of what used to be Manchuria - in reality, where Japan had conquered from China and established a puppet state, Imperial Manchukuo.
    • The London Nautica, a research center that also acts as a center for lunar travel, has a statue of Wehrner von Braun out front. In the real world von Braun worked on Nazi missiles and would go on to design rockets for NASA.
  • Hollywood Healing:
    • B.J. is already Made of Iron considering all the many crashes he survives, but he seems to have a bizarre immunity to knife wounds in particular. Such as when The Knife tortures him or when Bubi injects him with a tranquilizer and stabs him in the chest, he is barely affected and keeps on trucking.
    • One of the enemy melee moves is to stab B.J. multiple times in the shoulder. Although it looks like it should be fatal, it often only results in a negligible loss in health.
    • The move for blocking enemy melee attacks is getting their knife, jaw, or baton impaled by B.J.'s knife so they can't move.
  • Hopeless War: World War II has become this to the Allies thanks to the Nazis' technological leaps forward. The assault on Deathshead's compound in 1946 to try and assassinate him is effectively their last dice roll. The Allies are driven to unconditional surrender the following year.
  • Hub Under Attack: After B.J. returns from the Moon and London, he sees the Kreisau Circle's HQ on flames and under attack by Nazi forces. The events that unfold end with the deaths of J/Tekla and kick off the climax of the game.
  • Hyperactive Metabolism: B.J. can still wolf down a bowl of dog food in under a second flat, and by doing so, heal bullet wounds. Other foods appear in some levels. Ranging from loaves of bread to full dinners on a plate, along with some canned German foods for BJ to sample.
  • Hyperspace Arsenal: Played to the extreme that you can carry two of almost every weapon, for dual-wielding purposes.
  • Hypocrite: The Nazis. See Moral Myopia and Irony.
    • Deathshead rants about how non-Germans thrive on evil and destruction and how empathy and compassion are all lies. Yet, he tries to guilt-trip B.J. when he takes out the zeppelins by saying there were hard-working men with families on them. Riiiight...
  • Justified Tutorial: The opening sequence of the game teaches the player the basics of gameplay by having B.J. deal with a damaged fuel line (which teaches basic movement, searching containers, crawling, and using health packs in succession), then infiltrating a section of German trenches (which teaches weapon controls, stealth, etc.).
  • Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: Returning for the first time since Wolfenstein 3-D, complete with different images of B.J.. The levels are, in order of ascending difficulty:
  • Idle Animation: If you don't do anything with your gun for awhile (shoot it or aim down the sights), B.J. will do things like slap the magazine to secure it, adjust the sights, or check to see how many rounds are left in his magazine.
  • Industrialized Evil: Prisons have big automated machines for tattooing serial numbers on prisoners and sewing a block patch on their shoulder in an instant, and overall the Nazi architecture is overwhelming you with nasty concrete and steel structures.
  • Informed Ability: The Deathshead Commandos are referred to several times as the absolute best soldiers in the Third Reich, yet in-game they're among the very first enemies you fight, and aren't any tougher than any other Nazi soldier. Later in the game you fight Black Guards, who also dress in black but are equipped with heavier armor and actually are tougher and more skilled than regular enemies. Oddly, they receive no mention in the game's story or background material.
  • Inner Monologue: Courtesy of B.J. Blazkowicz.
  • In-Series Nickname: At this point, Deathshead's real name (Wilhelm Strasse) barely gets referenced, and even his underlings call him that when he can't hear them.
    Deathshead: You call me "Deathshead"... I don't like it. I'm a happy man. You see?
  • In Spite of a Nail: "Die Käfer" is a popular band that consists of, "four Englishmen from Liverpool in Nazi-controlled Great Britain," who were faced with the choice of either singing in German or getting banned by the Nazi regime. They chose to continue their career, but they are rumored to lace their lyrics with subtle anti-Nazi sentiment. Oh, and their latest album is named Das blaue U-boot (The Blue Submarine). Think can you guess the band's English name without translating it?
    • Other bands, like The Animals, survived under the Nazi rule - at the very least, they've been covered by some sort of German propaganda company that makes German folk versions of popular hits.
    • The first man to walk on the moon has the surname "Armstark". Try to guess what that translates to. Give up? It's Armstrong.
    • Berlin somehow features its famous TV tower and has Trabants driving around, both inventions of the communist German Democratic Republic. The former even existing 9 years before its real counterpart. Various other real-life cars from the period hailing from West Germany fill the traffic as well.
  • In the Style of: The Neumond Records albums which can be collected throughout the game are Shout Outs to the music of the real-life 1960's, although rendered through the heavy Nazi filter of the New Order's world.
    • "Mond, Mond, Ja, Ja" by Die Käfer, is a song in the style of The Beatles, especially their early years music. (It is heavily implied that Die Käfer actually are The Beatles, having changed their name and started singing in German to comply with Nazi censorship laws. It also doubles as a Historical In-Joke as The Beatles cut their teeth as musicians by performing in Hamburg, and recorded German-language versions of two of their early hits.)
    • "Weltraumsurfen" by The Comet Tails is a song in the style of The Beach Boys, especially their sound on the Surfin' USA album.
    • "Ich Bin Überall" by Schwarz-Rote Welle is a song in the style of The Grateful Dead.
    • "Zug nach Hamburg" by Die Schäferhunde is a parody of The Monkees's "Last Train to Clarksville".
    • "Mein Kleiner VW" by Hans, is a parody of "Summertime Blues" by Eddie Cochran.
  • Instant Seduction: On the train to Berlin, the scene cuts from Blazkowicz and Anya (who previously didn't do much beyond look at each other in the previous mission) talking about possibly sharing a bunk, to them mid-coitus. However, it was foreshadowed that Anya had already taken a liking to Blazkowicz when he was in a comatose state. There's also some dialogue indicating it's Glad-to-Be-Alive Sex after all the insanity the two of them have been through in the past couple of days.
  • Instant Waking Skills: When B.J. regains his wits after fourteen years of catatonia at the mental health facility, he realizes his legs feel "like jelly" and he has a massive headache. But within 90 seconds, he can still run, jump, and shoot at the top of his game like it's 1946, and is strong enough to cut a Nazi's throat wide open.
  • Irony: All those crazy inventions the Nazis used to win the war and conquer the globe? They were developed from stolen technology created by an ancient, super-advanced and Jewish techno-religious sect.
    • It actually goes further than that: one of the fundamental beliefs of Nazi racist philosophy was that the Aryan race was endowed with creativity, the ability and will to help culture and technology progress. Other races could, at best, hope to enjoy the fruits of the Aryan's intellectual accomplishments, and the very lowest on the racial hierarchy - the Jews - are no more than cultural parasites who do so while lessening them. Meanwhile, in the game, the Nazis owe almost all of their technological superiority to advancements made by Jews, for a high, moral purpose, which they themselves stole and while lessening it immeasurably, turned it into a tool of death and oppression.
    • There's also Deathshead's speech to B.J. at the end of the game. He claims that he built a civilization (no mention of using the Da'at Yichud technology) and that B.J. and the resistance are just mindless apes trying to tear it down for the sake of being destructive, and even has the nerve to ask you why "your kind thrives on cowardice and evil.".
    • Frau Engle and her boyfriend compliment BJ on his appearance, likening him to a blonde-haired blue-eyed Ubermensch. They also make him undergo a "purity test" to prove that he is of pure blood. Little do they know, aside from being a bona fide Nazi Hunter, he's also half-Jewish.
  • Ironic Name: Engel is German for angel. Frau Engel is anything but.
  • Jerkass Has a Point: J's rant to B.J. about how America treated non-whites, even before the Nazis came and began exterminating them, is an accurate reflection of pre-Civil Rights America.
  • Jump Scare: Several:
    • Deathshead's first appearance, appearing through a window and grinning in a room that you had just been in.
    • The Panzerhunds do this several times through the game, usually by suddenly blocking off exits or chasing after the player as they gnash their fangs.
    • The Knife ambushes you after you sneak into Camp Belica's guard barracks.
    • Near the end of the game, Bubi ambushes and stabs you with a tranquilizer as you climb up a short ladder.
  • Karma Houdini: Frau Engel is in Berlin when the resistance attacks Deathshead's compound, and thus survives. She's clearly traumatized by Bubi's death, however.
  • Karma Houdini Warranty: After seventeen years in-universe and thirteen years in real life, B.J. finally gets to kill Deathshead, although he may or may not have sacrificed his life to do it and technically Deathshead commits suicide rather than B.J. actually finishing him off.
  • Lampshade Hanging: The fact that Blazkowicz looks every bit the part of the Aryan Master Race is noted on a couple of occasions.
  • Lethal Joke Character: The enemies in the Wolfenstein 3-D Nostalgia Level. Limited Animation works in their favor, letting them fire much more quickly than their modern counterparts. As a result even a single pixelated Nazi can put a serious hurting on B.J.
  • Made of Iron: Over the course of the game, B.J. survives several explosions and crashes and gets stabbed multiple times by the likes of The Knife and Bubi; all of this only slightly inconveniences him. Even at the end he's largely intact after a point-blank grenade explosion that was enough to reduce Deathshead to gibs. Max also gets an honorable mention for continuing to fight on like nothing happened ever after being shot several times by Nazi stormtroopers.
    • Max Hass survives several machine gun barrages during the assault on the Kreisau Circle HQ, a burst of heavy caliber fire to his chest, and still manages to make his way, unarmed, to the helicopter bay, looking no worse for the wear. He is confirmed to still be alive in the sequel.
    • Caroline Becker managed to survive Hans Grosse shooting her, crippling her from the waist down, the explosion of an otherworldly machine that hurled her out of another dimension and into a ditch, waited three days in said ditch before she was rescued, and spent the rest of the war trying to fight a life-threatening illness.
    • Frau Engel deserves a special mention. She survives getting her jaw crushed by a robot, being grabbed by the head and thrown off a steep cliff - hitting a tree on the way - and shows up to gun down prisoners with an assault rifle in each hand, still in shape. Later on, she leads a successful assault on the Kreisau Circle's base, sporting a few new stitches and a promotion from Deathshead himself.
    • Bombate is riddled by bullets by Frau Engel during the escape from the work camp yet shows up at the hideout perfectly fine.
  • Mad Libs Catch Phrase: A recurring phrase in Ramona's journal is, "The Nazi appears to [X]. I learned this as I [proceeds to describe how she murdered said Nazi]".
  • Man in the Iron Mask: Seems to be used for particularly rowdy Resistance fighters and political prisoners at Eisenwald Prison, as you find the 1946 Survivor and four other prisoners entombed in full iron helmets that are also chained to the wall.
  • Mascot Mook: The Panzerhund, by the virtue of being both unique and menacing, features heavily in trailers, promotional artwork, the game's booth on E3, and as a collector's edition bonus.
  • Master Race: Of note, seeing as how previous Wolfenstein games rarely referenced this aspect of Nazism, if ever. In one scene, B.J. is actually forced to take a "purity" test by the sadistic Frau Engel, although she claims that it is not a serious test and just a bit of fun and games. Of course, B.J. might be blonde and have blue eyes, and is regarded almost without suspicion by Frau Engel in this scene; the irony is that he is not only an American of Polish descent, but also Jewish on his mother's side, according to Word of God. As a result, there is a subtle sense of dread throughout the sequence.
  • Mechanical Monster: The Panzerhund.
  • Mercy Kill: Either Fergus or Wyatt in the first phase of the end boss battle, pleading for B.J. to kill them. He delivers.
  • Military Alphabet: Blazkowicz uses the US World War II one to spell Da'at Yichud while on the radio with the Doylist benefit of spelling out the word for players. Bonus points for accurately using the only version BJ would be familiar with (the NATO phonetic alphabet wasn't standardized until 1956, and may not have been created in this Nazi-ruled timeline anyway.)
  • Mirroring Factions: J explains that he has little sympathy for the fall of America as an institution because of the racism of the time period, noting that from his point of view, the white American government and its enforcers were essentially Nazis before the actual Nazis came into power. Blazkowicz does not appreciate the comparison.
  • Monument of Humiliation and Defeat: London is full of these. See Crapsack World above.
  • Mook Horror Show: B.J. just absolutely wades right through whatever, and whomever, the Third Reich throws at him.
  • Moral Myopia: Deathshead berates Blazkowicz for causing wanton death and destruction, completely oblivious to the far more horrific death and destruction he's responsible for himself. At one point, he belittles the resistance for being sub-humans unable to comprehend that he has created a great civilization as they scramble to tear it down, ignoring the civilizations subjugated to make room for it. Even going as far to say he, the knight, cannot lose to the murderous villain, B.J. And all his posturing of Nazis being a superior race and culture is utterly debunked by the fact that all of the technology used to win the war comes from Da'at Yichud, a sect of Jewish scientists. Talk about the ultimate hypocrisy.
  • Motor Mouth: Tekla is very chatty. She even has a tendency to talk to herself during some of more long winded anecdotes.
  • More Dakka: Dual wielding Assault Rifles or Shotguns can provide a nice stream of gunfire, but if you want more bullets to waste on Nazis, use the detachable turrets.
    • One of the perks requires you to get three kills with dual assault rifles without releasing the triggers.
    • The Nazis upgrade their standard sidearm from semiauto to three-shot burst fire while B.J. is out of commission.
  • Morton's Fork: Regardless of whether you choose Fergus or Wyatt to be dissected, the survivor chews you out for it later on - you can't win either way.
  • The Mountains of Illinois: After the fateful assault in the prologue, Blazkowicz is found drifting through the Baltic sea and sent to an asylum located in "Maławieś,"note  not far from the coast. Later he visits Anya's grandparents who live nearby, "in the mountains". Maławieś, Anya's grandparents' home, and the bridge on the Oder River have some mountainous landscape in the background. But save for some gentle post-glacial hills, the Polish coast is as flat as Illinois, and all Polish mountains run along the southern border of the country, 400 miles away.
  • Mushroom Samba: In the timeline where Wyatt is alive, Blazkowicz has a brief one after dropping acid courtesy of J.
  • My Country Tis of Thee That I Sting: Compared to Wyatt or B.J., J doesn't have much patriotism for America, given his rather bitter (if valid) gripes about how blacks were treated by whites in America, before the Civil Rights Movement happened. On the other hand, he goes out playing ''The Star Spangled Banner" loud enough for all of Berlin to hear.
  • Mythology Gag:
    • In the prologue mission, Fergus Reid hopes there aren't "Nazi mutant fuckin' frankensteins" - likely referencing a certain enemy from Wolfenstein 3D or Return to Castle Wolfenstein, where Deathshead built the horrifying and mutated Lopers and proto-Ubersoldaten. Although given that they do run into Deathshead's latest experiments in the same level, this might be closer to foreshadowing...
    • The first four difficulty levels are the same from the original, and the Uber difficulty has B.J. making the same Slasher Smile face that he made for "I am Death Incarnate" in Wolfenstein 3D.
    • The all-white uniform worn by Deathshead's chief scientist is identical to those worn by the Officers/Lightning Guards from Wolfenstein 3D. Alternatively, it may be based on the very similar uniform worn by Mission 4 boss Otto Giftmacher, due to both being high-ranking Nazi scientists.
    • The Da'at Yichud fills the same role as the Golden Dawn from Wolfenstein (2009): An ages-old secret order that hides itself from society and uses magic (in the Da'at Yichud's case, tech that might as well be magic), who (at first reluctantly) serve as the Kreisau Circle's allies.
    • Ubersoldaten armor pieces fall off the same way they did in Return to Castle Wolfenstein, except now, you can pick them up.
    • The 1960 turrets are basically Venom Guns made bigger and laser-ier.
    • Just like the Thule civilization in Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Wolfenstein (2009), the Da'at Yichud are part of an ancient civilization with access to extremely advanced technology that might as well be magic.
    • B.J.'s hometown is revealed to be Mesquite, Texas. id Software was originally founded in Mesquite.
    • The highest difficulty level is "Mein Leben!", the death quote of the Wolfenstein 3D SS Guards.
  • Nazi Gold: Returns as a form of collectible. This time around, it's not used as currency, it just looks pretty and is achievement-bait.
  • Neglectful Precursors: It seems like the Nazis got their war-winning tech on account of this at first, but it turns out Da'at Yichud were perfectly willing to break their vow of secrecy and were in the process of giving their technology to the Allies so they could catch up once the Nazis stole it, but the Nazis were too fast for it to be of any help.
  • Never Found the Body: Frau Engel has her head crushed, is thrashed around a bit, then thrown into a tree before toppling off a cliff out of sight. Guess who not only comes back by the end of the level, but survives the rest of the game?
  • Never Mess with Granny:
    • Anya's grandma Olenka shoots a Nazi mook off his feet with a shotgun.
    • Caroline is also getting up there in years. She's also the sole surviving leader of the resistance movement.
    • Frau Engel proves to be a lot tougher than she looks. Even having her jaw crushed and being tossed off a cliff by a robot does not stop her from gunning down escaping prisoners while dual-wielding assault rifles.
  • Never Trust a Trailer: Averted. Just about everything shown in this early E3 trailer showed up in the final game.
    • The Old Blood's announcement trailer gives the impression of the game having a much more lighthearted and hammy tone. Instead, the actual game is just as depressing and serious as The New Order.
  • No Ending: The game ends with a heavily wounded Blazkowicz giving the order to nuke Deathshead's compound... then it cuts to black.
  • New Game Plus: Upon completing the game, you can import all of the perks and weapon upgrades you've gained over the course of the game. In order to do this, you must select from the chapter listing rather than selecting New Game. If you do that latter, then you restart with all of your goodies gone.
  • Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Bubi inadvertently saves your bacon at least twice; at the train his come-ons distract Engel long enough for B.J. to make his exit (if you wait around, her guards will warn you to flee while she's preoccupied before she comes up with another "game" to play), and in the concentration camp he has B.J. pulled aside for work detail because he looks familiar (Engel wanted to just liquidate him, reasoning that his large size meant he'd use up too much food).
  • Nice Mean And In Between: Wyatt, Fergus, and B.J.
  • No Ending / Bolivian Army Ending: Whether B.J. dies in the nuclear blast remained unresolved in this game (his presumed survival hinted by the sound of the approaching helicopter after the credits), and the new war against the Nazi empire has just begun at this point. Although, the New Colossus established that he was indeed rescued.
    • The sequel confirms that B.J did survive, but it seems he's been crippled and now requires the Power Armor to move.
  • No Fair Cheating: Activating the inbuilt cheat codes for invincibility or unlimited ammunition prevents you from unlocking perks and achievements. New Order also puts a particularly devious twist on it because its cheats are permanent (as in "closing and restarting the game, or starting a new campaign from scratch, won't deactivate them" permanent), so you better know in advance how to deactivate them again once you're ready to continue playing legitimately.
  • Nonstandard Game Over:
    • If you fail to choose either Fergus or Wyatt when you're captured by Deathshead in the prologue, the Supersoldaten holding you all down kill everyone, B.J. included.
    • If you're stupid enough to go for Frau Engel's gold-plated Luger during her "test" in the night train to Berlin, her bodyguards will make mince meat out of you before you get off more than one shot. However, there's a checkpoint right before that scene, and the sheer satisfaction of shooting her in the face, coupled with her utter shock about your audacity, makes it worth trying at least once, assuming you aren't running Ironman Mode.
  • No Swastikas: Played straight with trailers and the German version of the game to avoid being banned. For uncensored versions of the game, this trope is averted.
  • Not in This for Your Revolution: Subverted. Set Roth blows off B.J. when he's tracked down, saying the Da'at Yichud want nothing to do with outsiders, but he changes his mind quickly. It might have been a negotiation tactic to get B.J. to shut down the concentration camp instead of rescuing him alone.
  • "Not So Different" Remark: Played for Laughs in the journal entry regarding your fight against the London Monitor.
    Entry: Okay. Huge robot. Bent on destruction. We're not so different you and I.
  • Nuke 'em: The Nazis forced America to surrender by dropping a nuke on New York. In the endgame, this is the goal for Deathshead's fortress.
  • Older Than They Look: B.J. doesn't seem to have aged much if at all in the fourteen years between the prologue and the main game, which is kind of silly when you notice that he didn't experience any atrophy for his (considerable) muscles. In contrast, Caroline Becker clearly looks much older than when we last saw her.
  • Old-School Dogfight: Between Mustang Mk.Xs and Horten Ho-229s in the prologue. The Mustangs are soon destroyed.
  • One-Hit Polykill: One of the upgrades to the Laserkraftwerk allows any regular German soldiers in the scope's sights to be killed in one (multi)blast.
  • One-Man Army: B.J Blazkowicz effectively wages a one-man war against the Third Reich. In the ultimately-doomed assault on Deathshead's compound in 1946, Blazkowicz practically carries the Allies' effort singlehandedly by slaughtering dozens of Nazi soldiers, downing several German planes, wrecks two Panzerhunds, kills an Ubersoldat and (optionally) destroys the Baltic Eye.
  • Optional Stealth: There are a few segments of the game where, rather than gunning down every Nazi you see, you have the option of sneaking around and backstabbing them one-by-one. Killing commanders this way, for example, will keep them from summoning reinforcements. You have a number of unlockable tools to help, such as pistol silencers and throwing knives, as well as a full perk tree. However, the game doesn't penalize you if you forgo this route.
  • Orcus on His Throne: The game is heavy with Deathshead's presence; his image appears on the loading screen for every single level, and pre-recorded speeches by him are being broadcast throughout the game in Nazi facilities. However, he only personally appears in the game's first and last levels, and isn't directly involved in the game's plot at all until the finale. Justified in that the war is long over and he's busy creating weaponry to help subjugate the world; by the time the resurgent Resistance's actions become public enough to get his attention, they're already knocking on his front door with a nuclear submarine.
  • Pet the Dog:
    • An optional sidequest has B.J. finding some of Max's lost toys and leaving them on his nightstand. Later, he can find one of the concentration camp survivor's lost wedding ring.
    • In the prison, BJ can overhear two Nazi soldiers discussing "super-concrete". One of them thinks it poses a serious public health hazard, while the other keeps nervously deflecting and parroting the Nazi party line.
  • Pillow Silencer: During the Time Skip cutscene, a Nazi stormtrooper executes BJ's fellow patient at the sanatorium by putting a pillow onto his face and shooting him through it. It's unclear why he even bothers with it, though, since the sanatorium is being officially purged, anyway. Though it's probably because since gunshots in enclosed spaces are loud, he was probably just doing it for his own ears' sake.
  • Pseudo-Crisis: While posing as a scientist and infiltrating the Nazi moon base, B.J. goes through a scanner, which suddenly beeps in a manner similar to an alarm. The Nazi manning the scanner notices that B.J. has some shrapnel in him... and assumes B.J.'s a war vet, congratulates him on his service, and sends him on through.
  • Pocket Rocket Launcher: The 1960's version of the Assault Rifle has an 8-shot, drum-fed rocket launcher mounded as its Secondary Fire mode.
  • Point of Divergence: While at first glance the point where the timeline veers off would seems to be when the Nazis managed to get their wunderwaffes together. However, the actual point of divergence would be the creation of the Da'at Yichud, whose advanced technology was stolen by the Nazis, leading to their victory.
  • Pokémon Speak: Max Hass, the mentally-disabled man under the resistance's care, only ever says his own name.
  • Politically Incorrect Villain: In contrast to Wolfenstein (2009), where the most inflammatory comment is a remark about the swastika flying "proudly" over the White House from Deathshead, all of the villains in The New Order have embraced this trope completely. Just take a look at this line:
    Deathshead: I am a liberator! No longer must we serve the filthy parasite. No longer need we gaze upon his waddling gait polluting the purity of our bloodline. No longer will we tolerate his primitive brain and violent impulses. Oh, terrorists. Do you not see that my cause is just? Do you not see that there is no place for you in this world?
    • The Nazi regime as a whole is far more...historically accurate in its ideology than many depictions in media. The obsession with racial purity and physical perfection, concentration camps and the mass murder of minorities are not glossed over in the slightest, and the swastika itself is far more prevalent in the game's imagery than the less-offending Iron Cross frequently used in its stead.
  • The Power of Hate: B.J. has an immense (though justified) hatred of the Nazi regime, giving him the motivation required to gun their soldiers down without a second thought. It is at least implied to be the reason why he managed to shake off his vegetative state state in the beginning of the game.
  • Pre-Ending Credits: Exaggerated. The game rolls its credits after B.J. and either Wyatt or Fergus survive 1946, right after B.J. chooses which soldier to sacrifice to Deathshead. If no choice is taken, all three of them are executed and the game outputs a Non-Standard Game Over.
  • Press X to Die: Picking up the gun during Frau Engel's test results in, unsurprisingly, you being gunned down by her giant robot bodyguard. A rare example where Taking a Third Option is the one wrong option.
    • Of course, she outright tells you before the test that if you try to grab the pistol, you'll be dead before you can use it (and reinforces this statement afterwards). So if you ignore her warnings and try it anyway, there's really only one way to describe you...
  • Punch-Clock Villain: Though major antagonists like Deathshead and Frau Engel are gleefully vile, most of the ambient chatter of the Nazi mooks you come across show them as ordinary soldiers with everyday concerns and loved ones. One of Engel's guards even warns you to leave quickly before she drags B.J. into another "game". When a German woman wants to report deranged behavior to a Nazi soldier, the soldier asks her to report to the office that deals with that and seems more annoyed about the complaint than disgusted about the man spot using his mom lipstick.
    • There's also the two guards overseeing B.J. in the concentration camp. When B.J. sabotages the cement mixer, the guards don't yell or beat B.J., instead they try to fix the problem. When they realize it can't be fixed tonight, they decide to end the shift early and calmly let the prisoners back to their cellblocks without issue.
  • Puzzle Boss: The London Monitor, Prototype Robot, and the first phase of the final boss fight against Mecha Deathshead are all about figuring out how to harm the boss. In contrast, all mini-boss fights and the final half of the final boss fight are straightforward slug-fests.
  • Reconstruction: Of the Nazi-killing simulator. Rather than simply going, "The bad guys are Nazis, ergo it's okay to do terrible things to them," the game takes great pains to show why the Nazis were so terrible. References are frequently made to the master race and eugenics, cultures conquered by the Nazis are slowly being squeezed out of existence and replaced with German culture, the Nazis betraying their Axis allies (the Italians and the Japanese), and the second level shows them massacring every patient in an asylum simply because they're not useful. Even if you'd never heard of the Nazis before, they'd be infinitely hateable villains.
  • Regenerating Health: Played with, in a manner similar to Escape from Butcher Bay or most of the Far Cry games. B.J. has regenerating health, but it only regenerates up to the nearest multiple of 20, and health packs must be used to raise his health past them, should he suffer enough damage.
  • Removable Turret Gun: B.J. is able to detach minigun and laser turrets from gun emplacements. He moves slightly slower while carrying one and switching weapons would cause him to drop the heavy weapon, but otherwise it can be used as long as it has ammo. Being energy weapons, laser turrets can be recharged at the same stations that power up the Laserkraftwerk.
  • Repressive, but Efficient: The Nazis have built vast super-cities, a giant bridge between Europe and Africa, and even established a base on the moon. By 1960. Even the widespread sickness from super-concrete mold, which you'd expect to be the sort of quality control issue that would occur in a totalitarian system where you can be executed for demanding accountability from those who control the means of production, turns out to be the work of external sabotage rather than incompetence. Granted, much of the technology that makes their civilization so advanced was stolen from a hidden sect of Jewish scientist-monks whose scientific knowledge was several generations ahead of everyone else.
  • Retro Upgrade: In the fourteen years between 1946 and 1960, the Luger and the STG44 get modernised. The Luger is more notable in this regard, as it was first designed in 1898, yet by 1960, it's been upgraded into a Nazi version of the Auto-9. To a lesser extent, the Allied submachinegun from the prologue appears to be a Thompson fitted with modern Picatinny rails, which ingame are purely cosmetic.
  • Revisiting the Roots: While there is a minor form of Regenerating Health, scrounging for medpacks and armor is the key to regaining health. Also, B.J.'s new model is based on the original Wolfenstein 3-D sprite. Given the semi-focus on stealth, it's even revisiting Castle Wolfenstein.
  • Ridiculously Fast Construction: The Nazis have used their "super concrete" to build megalopolises all across Europe and most of their dominion. Unfortunately for them, the guy who provided them with the formula has been sabotaging it so that over time it becomes porous and moldy and cracks apart like stale cookies. In a few decades everything the Nazis have built will be rubble.
  • Robot Dog: The Panzerhund and the Kampfhund enemies.

    S-Z 
  • Sadistic Choice: Blazkowicz is forced by Deathshead to choose either Wyatt or Fergus to be put to the scalpel. The one that survives becomes The Lancer to Blazkowicz in the story, while the one who doesn't has his brain put into a robot at the end, whom you have to put down with a Mercy Kill. And no, you can't Take a Third Option; if you try, Deathshead kills both of them, then your squadmates, then you. The only options are to pick either Wyatt or Fergus.
    • Making matters worse, the decision comes up again later when the character you saved undergoes an episode of Survivor's Guilt and criticizes Blazko for making the wrong choice. Fergus lets down his thick armour and admits he was willing to Face Death with Dignity and had a soft spot for the younger Wyatt and says you should have saved the young lad; while Wyatt is almost in tears, resentful and unable to bear the responsibility thrust upon him, which he believes the more experienced Fergus would have been able to handle.
  • Save Scumming: Game progress is reset when BJ is killed or the player restarts a checkpoint... but perk progress isn't.
  • Say My Name: Wilhelm Strasse delivers a unique version of this after he expresses his disdain for the English translation of his nickname (Deathshead).
    Deathshead: It doesn't sound right in English. Say it... correctly. Toten... kopf.
  • Schizo Tech: A minor and possibly justified version of this occurs, since all Nazi technology is reverse-engineered from Da'at Yichud, meaning it doesn't have to follow a logical progression.
    • The Nazis have single-stage-to-Moon shuttles, but instead of using ICBMs to launch their nuclear missiles, they arm a submarine with a nuclear cannon.
    • A letter found in 1946 mentions the Germans have a nuclear-powered tank. Later in-game info says it took them until 1948 to build a nuclear bomb, and any more refined applications of nuclear energy came later.
  • Schrödinger's Player Character: The Sadistic Choice described above impacts the game quite a fair bit, and you'll receive different character bonuses depending on whether you choose Fergus or Wyatt. In addition, both timelines have a mutually-exclusive character as part of the Kreisau Circle, either J for Wyatt or Tekla for Fergus.
  • Self-Destruct Mechanism: at least one of the 1960 nazi robots can be dealt with by climbing into the armored transport from which he was released and pressing a Big Red Button. Which results in an explosive self destruction.
  • Sequel Hook: At the end of the credits, a helicopter's rotors can be heard, suggesting that Set, Anya, Bombate, and the rest of the escaping prisoners may have picked up B.J. before the base got nuked. Even if he doesn't live he clearly seems to be of the mind to wish to pass the torch to Anya, based on his final thoughts (and the fact that she's secretly a stone-cold Nazi-killing machine herself, just more indirectly than B.J.)
  • Serial Killer: "Ramona"/Anya, who was responsible for murdering dozens of Nazi soldiers in Poland during and after the war in increasingly violent and grotesque ways.
  • Sexual Karma: BJ and Anya are quite frisky when time permits (and sometimes when it doesn't). Which sucks for the resistance because they can be heard through the wall. By contrast, on the Nazi side, there's evil old woman Frau Engel and her bitch-boy Bubi.
  • Shell-Shocked Veteran: B.J. Blazkowicz has elements of this throughout the game. The Wolfenstein 3-D flashback level, for example, seems like a fun little shout-out at first. However, B.J.'s narration that he's done so much killing and will keep killing until he dies reveals it to be a sign of his psychological trauma.
    • To a lesser extent, Wyatt and Fergus also show signs of having been traumatized by decades of fighting.
  • Shoot the Medic First: While not medics, Commanders are only armed with a pistol, but are able to summon vast amounts of reinforcements, making taking them out quickly - and keeping a low profile until they're gone - a major gameplay element.
  • Shoot the Shaggy Dog: The Nazis inflict this on the world at large, even turning on the other Axis Powers. By 1960, they've pretty much taken direct and indirect control over much of the world and are in the process of taking care of the rest of it.
  • Shout-Out:
    • In the sewers where the Kreisau Circle hide, there's a large cog shaped door marked with the number 101.
    • The Nazi Lunar Base has a section where B.J. approaches a machine in a giant dome that resembles the Space Jockey telescope and familiar theme music from the film even begins to play. It also has venting which is lit like and resembles the Discovery One and is manned by soldiers whose uniforms make them resemble a different kind of storm-trooper.
    • Many of the cutscenes are reminiscent of the works of Quentin Tarantino, which makes sense considering it is close in tone to Inglourious Basterds. Specifically, the train scene with Frau Engel parallels the mounting tension and dialogue-based suspense of the infamous milk scene from the previously mentioned film. Also, when B.J. first discovers the Da'at Yichud technology at the London Nautica, the cutscene goes to split screen and features over-the-top typography as B.J. spells out the words on a piece of parchment. Finally, the game also has the tendency to cut abruptly to flashbacks (think Hugo Stiglitz from Inglourious Basterds or the whipping scene from Django Unchained).
    • As with Quake, getting your health past 100 will have it slowly degrade back to normal. In addition, Bobby Bram's keychain has the rocket launcher from Quake III: Arena hanging off of it, and the Laserkraftwerk looks almost exactly like Quake 4's railgun.
    • According to a newspaper clipping, the Nazis brought in specialized Chinese anti-insurgents in order to help crush the American insurgency.
    • In Tekla's room (you need to play Fergus's timeline), among the countless papers and scribbles on the walls, five spray-painted letters stand out: IDKFA, one of the most known cheat codes in Doom.
    • If a ringing telephone in one of the buildings near Eisenwald Prison is answered, the caller will ask to speak with Mueller, possibly referencing a similar scene in Fatherland wherein the caller asks for 'Bühler'.
    • A literary allusion occurs in the last mission when a wounded Blazkowicz partially quotes Emma Lazarus' poem "The New Colossus" in his final inner monologue of the game. The poem was famously inscribed on a plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty, and coupled with the image of Anya holding up a light to guide the prisoners escaping from Deathshead's compound serves as a rather touching homage to the concept of freedom in an otherwise overwhelmingly oppressive world.
      BJ: A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name - Mother of Exiles. "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me."
    • A mentally-disabled giant who possesses immense strength, but dislikes violence, and can only say his own name. Max Hass or Hodor?
    • Several songs are a take-off on various fifties, sixties and seventies bands: Die Käfer is a mishmash of The Beatles at the height of the British Invasion (with the opening riff being that of Twist and Shout)note , Karl and Karla references the sixties pop duo of Paul and Paula and is a take-off on "lover far from home" songs of the fifties and sixties, The Bunkers reference The Kinks, The Comet Trailers evokes 50s surf rock (The Beach Boys, especially), and "Zug nach Hamburg" is a reference to "Last Train to Clarksville".
    • A victorious Nazi Germany that's launched space missions and is getting bogged down in their conquest of Africa? Not the first time it's happened.
      • Speaking of music, J goes out using a guitar and an awe-inspiring collection of speakers to defy the Nazis. They even think it's some kind of weapon, though it unfortunately does not literally kill any fascists.
    • The achievement for collecting all letters in the game is named 'The Lives of Others'. Fitting for a fascist German setting, where surveillance is omnipresent.
    • One of the game covers (namely, the one used for this page's image) and several of the armors used by Nazi soldiers and Ubersoldats appear to take their cues from Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade. Japan also becomes a puppet regime under Nazi Germany, much like it did in Kerberos Saga.
    • The updated pistol used in 1960 resembles the Auto-9 if it had been built around a Luger instead of a Beretta 93R. It even functions the same, firing three round bursts when not fitted with a suppressor.
  • Significant Greeneyed Redhead: Anya, though her hair isn't bright enough to qualify her as a Fiery Redhead.
  • Simple, yet Awesome: The Automatic Shotguns, tears enemies to shreds, at even midrange. Especially with the Shrapnel Rounds, just fire away, and one of the rounds will eventually hit their mark.
  • Shotguns Are Just Better: Especially when they're automatic.
  • The Slacker: It's surprising that Bubi is still only Untersturmführer (2nd lieutenant, give or take) at 28, especially when he's banging a Lieutenant Colonel. It's implied he's not a very good soldier, especially with the weak stomach and submissive attitude. Having the cloying pet name probably isn't getting him much respect either.
  • Slasher Smile:
  • Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Surprisingly, grimly idealistic. The Nazis crushed the free world under their jackboots and twisted it into a living nightmare, but there are still good people still fighting on.
  • Sniper Pistol: You can pick off an enemy from an absurd distance with a silenced pistol, assuming you can hit them with the gun's clunky iron sights. As B.J. might say, "Fuck you, physics."
  • Solemn Ending Theme: I Believe, which plays in the end credits.
  • Space Base: The Nazis turn out to have one on the moon, which is where they keep all their nuclear launch codes. B.J. ends up going there, likely becoming the first American in space in the process.
  • Space Is Noisy: Averted. The exterior sections at the Nazi lunar base are completely silent, aside from impacts on B.J.'s suit or decompressions.
  • Spanner in the Works: Set manages to sabotage the Nazis' otherwise-indestructible "super-concrete" by mixing in limestone that helps to cultivate mold. Helps that he is part of the super-secret order of Jewish scientists who helps create it in the first place.
  • Stay in the Kitchen: The Nazi regime in New Order has elements of this, as indicated by various background conversations and documents. Truth in Television, the real Nazis were highly socially reactionary.note  Frau Engel is an exception, but her high ranking position was cemented through her ability to effectively run a concentration camp and the fact that she's the only person to survive B.J.'s wrath, and eavesdropping on a conversation she has with Bubi states she thinks women should stay feminine, and boasts of having done her mother's duty for Germany. This is in contrast to the previous Wolfenstein games, which had an entire organization of high-ranking females known as the Elite Guard ordering the lower ranking Nazis around. This trope may account for the lack of Nazi dominatrix officers running around in black latex (in addition to possibly clashing with the game's darker, less sensationalist tone).
    • One thing that is never explained is how Frau Engel went from being an offical in the Bund Deutscher Mädel (Hitler Youth for girls, basically) to managing a concentration camp.
    • This response to a classified ad from a high-ranking Nazi space marine is dripping with this trope:
      Ad: Are you a cute, young girl who likes to cook and clean? Do you have hips suited for bearing many children? Four, five, six, maybe twelve? Are you tired of pursuing your own goals and the pressure of success and you want to settle down as a homemaker?
  • The Stinger: At the very end of the credits, a helicopter is heard approaching.
  • Straight for the Commander: German commanders can call for reinforcements if they're alerted to your presence; taking them out unseen is the best tactic.
  • Stupidity Is the Only Option: During the labor camp stage, B.J. has to retrieve a battery that's crucial to his escape plan. Said battery is housed in a device that periodically throws off sparks and generally looks extremely unsafe. Your only option is to grab the thing with your bare hands, which electrocutes you, knocks you out, and allows the Nazis to find you. Making it even stranger is the fact that earlier in the game, B.J. would not conduct his Jack Bauer interrogation until you found goggles and an apron as "splatter protection".
    • That particular level has several ones: B.J. arriving as a prisoner meant that he was going to be herded into the gas chambers and would have if not for Bubi's intervention. Entering the basement of the building where "The Knife" is, B.J. walks straight past a crowbar that could have made a decent melee weapon and has to let himself get stabbed and almost finished off. And for that matter, only throwing the battery to Set Roth at the last possible moment.
    • B.J. doesn't move at all when Deathshead reveals and primes his grenade. It would've been more practical for BJ to find other ways to kill him off.
  • Stupid Jetpack Hitler: Taken to its logical extreme. The Nazis have access to Mecha-Mooks, developed the atomic bomb before the Allies and have landed on the Moon. It seems like dropping all the Ghostapo nonsense and letting Deathshead do his thing counted for something in the end. Ironically, most of this tech was reverse engineered from Jewish sources.
  • Suddenly Voiced: While Wolfenstein 2009 had B.J. narrate during cutscenes and intel, here, he's fully talkative in gameplay, too.
  • Suicide Attack: At the London Nautica, Bobby Bram does this with a car bomb to blow a path open for B.J..
  • Survival Mantra: For when the situation is too much for even William Joseph "B.J." Blazkowicz to handle. He teaches it to Wyatt early on as a "little trick" to get one's bearing's back.
    B.J.: Count to four, inhale. Count to four, exhale.
  • Survivor Guilt: Each timeline has a scene in which Fergus/Wyatt vents at B.J. for Blazkowicz choosing to spare them instead of the other. In Wyatt's case, he feels he's gotten friends killed in the years since that Fergus might have saved. In the case of Fergus, he feels like he and Blazkowicz are too old to keep doing this forever, and that Wyatt should have been saved to that end.
  • Suspiciously Similar Substitute: The Nazis under Deathshead can be described as what a loyalist HYDRA ala The First Avenger would be like had Schmidt remained in Hitler's shadow or if the SS took charge.
  • Take a Third Option: When Deathshead tells you to choose who to disect, you can refuse to choose... which leads to having your head crushed in by the super soldier holding you down, along with Fergus, Wyatt, and Prendergast, ending the game.
  • Take Cover!: Played with: B.J. can fire around corners, and even lean from one side to another on any turrets he's commanding (rather than stand up straight), but it's not snap-into-cover, and being able to maneuver quickly is a key part in staying alive.
  • Taking You with Me: Just as B.J.'s about to finish off Deathshead, the latter pulls out a grenade so that they go out together. He succeeds in putting B.J. in critical condition.
    Deathshead: So... gullible.
  • Terraform: By 1960, the Nazis have invented technology to transform the Sahara into a green paradise. They plan to do the same with Mars and Venus.
  • Those Wacky Nazis: It really wouldn't be a Wolfenstein game without them.
  • Throwing Off the Disability: Late in the game, Caroline uses the Da'at Yichud Powered Armor to run, jump, and generally kick ass.
    • B.J. also has a somewhat downplayed case of this when he shakes off the effects of his fourteen-year long coma in a minute. Admittedly, that doesn't qualify as a disability, but after a coma there's usually lots of physical therapy needed to get the person acclimated to using their muscles again. It's referenced the moment he attempts to leave his chair and falls to the floor with legs like jelly, but when you gain control B.J. decides to skip straight to being fully recovered, save for a couple blurry vision moments. Then again, an optional flashback in the bathroom indicates Anya might have been paying extra attention to B.J.'s body.
  • To the Pain: Frau Engel's Badass Boast when you crush her jaw.
  • Tragic Monster: Depending on who you spared, either Wyatt or Fergus become a Nazi mecha made by Deathshead himself to hunt you down before the final fight with Deathshead.
  • Translation Convention: Invoked inconsistently: Frau Engel speaks German most of the time yet suddenly speaks English when she threatens B.J. directly. Also, the prisoners in the concentration camp speak English among themselves even though none of them seem to be Anglophones. They seem to be mostly Russians and Namibians, so B.J. is unlikely to be familiar with their native languages.
  • Truth in Television:
    • "The New Order" was an actual term in Nazi doctrine.
    • The aircraft attacking the Allied bombers in the prologue were quite real, though they were never mass-produced in real life.
    • The Nazis also had some very lofty aspirations towards space flight and space exploration, including developing a concept for a space plane / suborbital bomber. Like the above example, this didn't get very far before being shelved in real life.
    • The Kreisau Circle was a real German resistance movement centered in Kreisau (now Krzyżowa), Poland.
    • That huge dome you see in that shot of Berlin? That's the Volkshalle, which was an actual plan by Hitler to create an enormous dome to put the Pantheon to shame. It's likely that the 'Superconcrete' was invented by the developers as a way to justify its existence, as the Volkshalle was found to be so ridiculously, stupidly, impractically big that it would have its own weather system. It would also slowly sink into Berlin's soft soil.
    • One of the collectible newspapers reveals the Nazis have created their ultimate superweapon: a giant parabolic mirror called the Sonnengewehr, or Sun Gun. Orbiting above the Earth, it can focus enough sunlight to burn a city or boil the oceans. The original plan for the Sonnengewehr was proposed by a physicist back in 1929.
    • While the Da'at Yichud are a fictional organization, and no secret order of Sufficiently Advanced ultratech rabbis ever existed, it is true that one of the most influential figures in Jewish philosophical history - Maimonides (known to Jews as רמב"מ), who was himself a scientist and a doctor on top of being a rabbi, wrote extensively on the subject of the association between the fields. He even went so far as to deduce (just like the fictional Da'at Yichud) that since God is expressed in all facets of the universe and science is humanity's means of understanding the universe, the act of scientific study is thus partly spiritual in nature and it is the duty of the truly pious to advanced their understanding of science as a holy process.
    • As mentioned above, you can hear a woman trying to report a neighbor's son for trying on his mother's lipstick during one of the interim chapters. Homosexuals (and to a lesser extent lesbians) were heavily persecuted in Nazi Germany, with thousands being sent to the concentration camps and being forced to wear a pink star. This represented a major turnaround from the (relatively) tolerant atmosphere towards LGBT individuals in the Weimar Republic, although this tolerance was only present in the major cities. Several Nazi doctors experimented on gay prisoners in an attempt to find a "cure" for homosexuality.
    • Several 60's pop songs can be heard in-game — both German-language covers and originals — many of which subtly or openly reinforce faith, family, and Fatherland. While Germany did ban public performances of jazz and swing in 1935, citing their "degenerate" black and Jewish influence, and blocked foreign music broadcasters, records were still sold and remained popular; to combat this, most songs were officially translated and watered down, or even re-recorded as bilingual propaganda by the state-sponsored band Charlie and His Orchestra.
    • As noted under AKA47, the G3 battle rifle was developed from a late war prototype assault rifle made by Mauser, so the 1960's Assault Rifle having elements of it makes sense.
  • Unspoken Plan Guarantee: Bobby Bram's Suicide Attack is never directly mentioned in the build up to "Project Whisper", although the behavior of some of the Kreisau Circle does hint at it. In true form, the plan goes off (relatively) smoothly.
  • Unique Enemy: Even though Panzerhunds have their own kill count tracked in the game's statistics page, you only ever fight one in a straight fight, towards the end of the game. All other Panzerhund encounters consist of shooting them from a turret, or trying to run away from them.
  • Unlockable Difficulty Levels: The game features four custom difficulty settings, each of which is unlocked by recovering fragments of code from within the game and entering them in a special menu screen. Game modes unlocked include "999",note  "Walk in the Park",note  "Hardcore",note  and "Ironman".note 
  • Utility Weapon: The Laserkraftwerk starts out only really good for cutting through metal sheets, but if you get enough upgrades for it it becomes a BFG. It also becomes Blazkowicz's signature weapon, and the one gun he always has in later chapters.
  • Villain with Good Publicity: Due to his key role in winning the war, Deathshead is consistently painted by Nazi propaganda as a war hero and a philanthropist. In actuality, he is a sadistic mass murderer whose charity is a cover to find a stable supply of human beings to dissect.
  • Videogame Caring Potential: Some of the side missions — recovering medicine for a sick concentration camp inmate, finding a widow's lost wedding ring, locating Max's lost toys, and so forth — are purely optional and dependant on the kindness of the character (and player) to complete. However, they usually reward you with collectibles, so for the diligent achievement hunter they're mandatory.
  • Villain World: For the Nazis, their new world is a Utopia, a dream come true. For everyone else... not so much.
  • Wham Line: More of a Wham Song, but in the Wyatt timeline, as the Kreisau base is raided by the Nazis, J begins playing his guitar through speakers loud enough for all of Berlin to hear...and what should be heard through them but a very familiar acid rock rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner!
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: The O.S.A. (Office of Secret Actions) — the Allied organization from the previous two Wolfenstein games responsible for assigning B.J. Blazkowicz's missions — is mentioned in the first level, but disappears for the rest of the game. However, it's a pretty safe bet that they were destroyed when the Nazis won the war.
    • We never find out what happens to Anya's grandparents after they successfully smuggle B.J. and Anya into Berlin.
    • Caroline's radio personnel from the operation in Isenstadt are nowhere to be seen.
  • What the Hell, Player?: Subverted if you flank the Nazis in Eisenwald prison. Fergus will ask you where the hell you're going as you run down on a side hallway... then eventually commend you for flanking them, and tell you to carry on.
  • Why Couldn't You Save Them?: If either Fergus or Wyatt survive 1946, they will berate you for not saving the other instead of him when you speak to them during the second visit to the HQ before heading off to Camp Belica.
  • You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Some newspaper clippings in the Kreisau Circle's hideout reveal that the Nazis eventually sent their new war machines to invade their allies, and both Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan quickly came under Nazi rule like the rest of the world.
  • Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: The Nazi regime labels Blazkowicz and his allies as terrorists. And they do some morally questionable things, such as driving a suicide car bomb into the front gate of a research facility that may or may not be purely military.
  • Zeppelins from Another World: All over the place by 1960. Justified since Deathshead used one as his base of operations during the war.

I believe it's gonna work out okay...but not for me, and not for you...

 
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After learning that the US surrendered to Germany and that the Nazis' managed to round up the Resistance; Blazkowicz interrogates Friedrich Keller whom he had captured to find out where the most-likely spot the Resistance Fighters were being kept at.

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